Mission Journal: Politics influence justice in Senegal

Senegalese journalists say justice is not on their side when they are victims of abuse by powerful officials or security forces. I met recently in Dakar with journalists targeted with criminal acts in apparent reprisal for their work. In these two high-profile cases, CPJ has found evidence of political influence on the judiciary.

Three years ago this month, on June 21, 2008, reporters Boubacar
Kambel Dieng of Radio Futurs
Médias and Kara Thioune of West
Africa Democracy Radio were the victims of scuffle
with police officers following a soccer match at the capital Dakar's
Léopold Sédar Senghor Stadium. Dieng's tape recorder captured
the cries and shrieks of the two handcuffed journalists as officers punched and
kicked them in a secluded room inside the stadium. The shocking audio
was later broadcast on RFM. Yet even as mounting public
outrage forced the government to announce an investigation and
formal complaints by Dieng and Thioune were filed, top Senegalese officials
appeared to interfere in the case and predetermine its outcome. Interior Minister
Cheikh Tidiane Sy released a press statement blaming the journalists for the
violence, accusing Dieng of "provoking" the policemen by "punching one of the
officers." President Abdoulaye Wade picked senior magistrate Mahawa Sémou Diouf
to oversee
preliminary investigations while repeating
his interior minister's accusation against the journalists during a press
conference in Chicago.

Authorities then transferred the
case to a military tribunal, arguing that it was more competent to
adjudicate allegations of misbehavior by members of the security forces. It was not until November 26, 2010 that the
journalists' three indicted
aggressors, warrant officer Lamidou Dione and peace officers Moussa Coulibaly
and Mbaye Diouf, faced reckoning. But of the three officers, only Diouf was convicted
on charges of "aggravated assault and battery, acts
of torture," and sentenced to a suspended one-month prison sentence and ordered to
pay 750,000 CFA francs in damages to the journalists.

Months after the verdict, Thioune and Dieng are unsatisfied and
cynical about the effectiveness and independence of Senegalese justice. "I'm
not satisfied with the verdict and the trial was neither just nor fair, and
it's a shame for Senegalese justice," said Dieng, who was hospitalized
for three weeks for injuries sustained in the beating. He contested the competence of the military
tribunal and claimed the court refused to hear witnesses who could have
testified in his favor. "The trial is over, there's no means to appeal and even
if there was, I would not have done it." Thioune went further: "I'm persuaded
that the judges received instructions. Otherwise, for policemen who did what
they did that day, with all the humiliation, the blows and injuries and
violence we suffered, this trial is far from being just and fair."

Perceived unfairness also marked the case of prominent
journalist Abdou Latif Coulibaly, editor of La Gazette, a weekly
critical of the government. On the
night of October 5, 2010, assailants broke
into Coulibaly's home, taking
his laptop, mobile phones and his 4x4 Kia vehicle. Police arrested five men,
but only two were convicted
and sentenced to prison terms. Officers returned the stolen items to Coulibaly,
but the journalist told CPJ that he noticed sensitive files on his laptop,
which were basis for future investigative stories, were missing. "The
'burglars' must have opened my computer and deleted some files. At this time,
I'm wondering if this break-in was not masterminded,"
he said.

True or not, this possible lead appeared not
to have been explored by the Senegalese police during its
investigation. In an interview with CPJ, national police spokesman Col. Aliou
Ndiaye was quick to brush aside any lead other than a mundane criminal act.
"The facts of the case demonstrate that it was just a
break-in because neither of the defendants ever cited the name of a mastermind
to police or judicial authorities," he said. He went on to say that the case
was closed and that "the work of the police was not to check the journalist's
computer but to find it and return it."

Perhaps the break-in would not have raised suspicions if
Coulibaly was not a top government critic who regularly takes on the ruling
elite with dossiers breaking high-profile government corruption scandals. In
fact, Coulibaly is facing multiple criminal defamation prosecutions brought by
top officials, and is currently appealing two separate suspended
prison sentences. Commenting on the outcome of the break-in at his
residence, Coulibaly called Senegalese justice "corrupt and disorganized," an assertion
disputed by Senegalese High Commissioner for Human Rights Mame Bassine Niang.
"Senegalese justice is professional and independent. As the first female lawyer
in Senegal, I have no doubt about it," she told CPJ. "President Wade has great
respect for journalists and the government does not get itself involved in
cases before justice," she added.

Yet Wade, a career lawyer, has prominently used his power to
intervene decisively in a case in which Farba Senghor, his former transport
minister and the chief propagandist of his ruling PDS party, was found responsible
for masterminding the August 17, 2008 ransacking
of two critical newspapers, L'As and 24 Heures Chrono. Among the assailants
arrested by police were a driver and bodyguards of Senghor, but state
prosecutor Ousmane Diagne declared in an interview
that only Wade could "authorize" criminal prosecution of a cabinet minister. Wade
eventually sacked
Senghor from the government, only to dictate the terms under which his subordinate
would face justice. In a subsequent statement to reporters, the president said
Senghor would be tried before the High Court of Justice, a tribunal run by the PDS-controlled
parliament that handles cases involving public officials.

Nearly three years later Senghor, whom the president considers
as close as a "son," has yet to be tried by the High Court and is leading
Wade's political campaigns ahead of 2012 presidential elections. Meanwhile, the
perpetrators of the attacks on L'As and
24 Heures Chrono are all free, pardoned
by the president shortly after they were sentenced
to prison terms.

Reporting from Dakar. Nassirou
Diallo contributed to this report from New York.

Mohamed Keita is advocacy coordinator for CPJ's Africa Program. Keita has written about independent journalism and development in sub-Saharan Africa for publications including The New York Times and Africa Review, and has appeared on NPR, the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and Radio France Internationale. Keita has also given presentations on press freedom at the World Bank, U.S. State Department, and universities. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ.

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